Now, how can this plan to prosper us be reconciled with the Babylon where God's people found themselves? With the Babylon which is our fallen world today?

The key lies in the redemption of God. The Bible never promises that bad will not come to good people. Quite the opposite, in fact. Jesus warned his followers, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). Jesus was crucified, Paul beheaded, Peter crucified upside down, every apostle but John martyred, and John exiled on Patmos. A million Christians died in the first centuries of the faith simply for following Christ. God never promised that his plan to prosper us and give us a future meant temporal health and wealth.

Rather, his present plan is a means to our eternal good: "'Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you,' declares the Lord, 'and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,' declares the Lord, 'and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile'" (Jeremiah 29:12-14).

God will redeem their Babylonian captivity by using it to draw his people back to himself. In Babylon as they had not in Israel, his people would "come and pray to me." They would "seek me with all your heart." Then he would return them to their land, and through them one day bring the Messiah for all peoples. He would redeem the pain they faced in Babylon by using it to draw them to himself.

We'll speak more of this next week when we consider Romans 8:28. For now, let's remember a statement I've made often in the last year: God's holiness requires him to redeem all that he permits or causes. God is redeeming the tragedy of Virginia Tech and 9/11. He stands ready to redeem cancer and heart disease, divorce and disease and death. I don't have to understand all the ways he is, to know that he is. I don't have to understand aerodynamics to board an airplane, so long as the pilot does. God stands ready to use bad times for good purposes, always. In Babylon then, and in Babylon today.